Soviet troops and East German police shot and killed a bereaved Soviet soldier who abandoned his unit and tried to go home after learning that his brother had been killed in action in Afghanistan, a West Berlin newspaper reported Sunday. The soldier was shot more than 80 times when a taxi he had commandeered ran into a roadblock, the daily Berliner Morgenpost said, quoting reports of travelers returning from East Germany.

ON April 1, 1999, Veronica Melendez was in labor at King/Drew when her baby's heart rate began to slow, a possible sign of fetal distress. She was sent to the operating room for a caesarean. En route, however, doctors diverted the 22-year-old to a delivery room for another attempt to deliver the boy without surgery. There, doctors used forceps to try to free him, an analysis of the case by attorneys for the county found. The effort failed.

Enough donations have been received by the bereaved family of Omar Jimenez, an 8-year-old Santa Ana boy who died tragically trying to enter his home through a window, to pay for the $3,000 in funeral expenses. "We want to thank the people who contributed. We want to tell them we love them," Omar's mother, Maria Elena Jimenez, said Tuesday. Omar died last Wednesday in a freak accident when he was crushed by a falling window at the couple's Santa Ana home.

When death strikes in a Jewish family, the traditional mourning follows a somber pattern--no work, no entertaining, garments torn, praying thrice daily, and unrestrained tears. For seven days, the bereaved remain at home, always with a light burning, symbolizing the inextinguishable soul. The mourners wear slippers, and sit on a low stool or other low place, signs of deprivation. "Extolled and hallowed be the name of God. . . .

The husband of a close friend dies. You want to send your condolences. You check the cards at the local drugstore, but nothing seems right. Too flowery. Too religious. Too formal. So you sit down with pen and paper and start to write. You are gripped with an overwhelming feeling of helplessness. Everything you start to say seems awkward or cliched or inadequate. You want to be warm and supportive. You want to express your sympathy. You want to say just the right thing. You have writer's block.

For the 26th time, Elinor Peterson placed a bright red Christmas plant on the grave of a friend last week. It's an annual ritual for an unusual friend--Bridget, a pet Scottish terrier that Peterson buried on a Calabasas hillside in 1960. This year, however, the gesture had special significance. Peterson is one of 700 pet owners who joined two months ago to purchase the historic Los Angeles Memorial Pet Park to protect their buried pets from developers' bulldozers for "eternity."

Under the Dog Star by Joseph Caldwell (Viking: $16.95; 235 pp.) In a way, Joseph Caldwell's novel is "A Death in the Family" for disjointed and unskinned times. Here, as in James Agee's book, the sudden death of a father detonates in a family pond. Concentric shock waves spread; the novel charts their turmoil and, eventually, their subsidence. But in "Under the Dog Star" there are no social or traditional breakwaters for the turbulence to exhaust and transform itself against.